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Article writer, Streamer, and Eternal Personality, the one thing Sam “LightsOutAce” Bruning wasn’t known for was his tournament play. With a schedule that left him essentially unable to attend Saturday tournaments, LOA was forced to rely exclusively on Last Chance Qualifiers for invitational invites. After two unsuccessful bids in earlier seasons, LOA finally broke through into the in the final season of the year. Once he finally arrived at an Invitational, he delivered, cruising through the winner’s bracket to a convincing win. This win came as a surprise to many, given that LightsOutAce was far better known for playing meme decks like Mono Justice and his personal favourite Knucklebones in top Master. However, it’s impossible to succeed with these kinds of decks without an abundance of pilot skill (and more than a little luck) and LightsOutAce displayed no small degree of mastery during his winning run.

There’s a good player hiding underneath the memes, and Worlds is exactly the tournament to bring out the best in him. As a player, LightsOutAce boasts that he can almost always read his opponent’s exact hand in the midgame turns. Attuned to his opponents and familiar with any and all matchups, his guesses are right more often than not. This allows him to push safely when conventional wisdom dictates to hold, and he has the guts to go for it, secure in the belief that his opponents can’t punish him. However, all good things can be taken too far, and LOA sometimes gets locked into reading tricks that aren’t there and letting Siraf live, for example. He’s got a strong mental game, unshakable confidence, and boundless optimism, all of which will serve him well in a long tournament like the World Championships. No matter what happens, you can be sure that Ace will be playing with a smile.

All that said, he only has the one win to his name. LightsOutAce has the second lowest matches played of any invitational player, with a mere 38 matches to his name. Despite his low match count and recent success, his winrate is only middle of the pack – you’d expect it to be much higher for a player on a hot streak. LOA is a good player and he’s won a tournament, but at this level of play everyone is great player and nearly everyone has won a tournament. He’ll have to prove himself a second time, on a much bigger stage, in order to show that he didn’t just spike one tournament. It’s a tall task, but LightsOutAce has shown good use of his pretournament prep time. If he can use it well, he may find the winning line yet again.